Unfortunately, the "conservative" Republican Party you think you belong to no longer exists, and good luck trying to reclaim it. And if you think the current regime is actually protecting free speech, you're really not paying attention.
Yet here you are, freely voicing your opinion on an open forum with no ramifications. If you chose to go protest, you are free to do so as long as you don’t become verbally or physically violent towards people, buildings and law enforcement officers (state and federal). Additionally, the colleges and universities are also free to “teach” their version of “education” without any causation. The Republican Party may not be what it used to be but the Democratic party has been completely flipped on its head and dangerously close to socialism and communism which results in a much more dangerous “regime”. You seem to be the one with your head in the sand and not paying attention.
Anyone can make any claim they want. I'd appreciate your making the case that the republican party is more restrictive than the democratic party, especially in light of this post.
Well...perhaps I misinterpreted "acceptance letter to the Republican Party." But I don't think I did. And I did not write that the Republican Party was more restrictive than the Democratic Party, but that they don't seem to be very tolerant of free speech (or religion, for that matter).
It might be time to move beyond Woke Derangement Syndrome.
You read "acceptance letter to the Republican party" differently than I do, but I make no claim that my interpretation is more accurate than yours.
As for WDS, I see MAGA as a reaction to WDS. At least at the start, MAGA developed to reject century-old progressive bigotry against anyone who wasn't a progressive bigot. I've got Liza to back me up, as she goes as a far back as Thomas Dewey in examining the extent to which the left has inserted its philosophy into public education.
I don't care who believes what. I care who attempts to force others to go along. Liza again backs me up, concerning 'liberal' strongarm tactics to force conformity on college campuses.
If you would care to examine MAGA tactics along the same lines, feel free. I didn't come here to defend the republican party. But I do feel somewhat less threatened by that party than by the democratic party..
I didn't come here to defend the Democratic Party, although I think Trump and his minions have made a mess of things. I believe our education system, ideally, should expose students to a wide range of ideas, and that any shutting down contrary opinions is harmful. MAGA's insistence that we never look at the ugly bits of our history is just as harmful as the sort of indoctrination Lisa describes.
I also think it's funny that the progressives—the ones calling for affordable health care for everyone, jobs that pay a living wage, an end to foreign wars, etc.—are the new boogymen. It's the centrist corporate Democrats, not the left, who are responsible for so much of the absurdity MAGA reacts to.
MAGA does not insist that we not look at the ugly parts of history. it insists on accuracy. Both my and my wife's ancestors fought for the North in the civil war. They fought to end slavery. My wife's great great grandfather was killed at Antietam. MAGA is not opposed to teaching that the North fought to end slavery. They are opposed to NOT teaching it. It is progressives that do anything they can to work around minor details such as that the South was headed up by democrats and the the KKK was democrat controlled. Likewise, the making and enforcement of Jim Crow laws were by democrats. MAGA is not opposed to teaching this, progressives are. And, no, Nixon had no southern strategy aimed at bringing the KKK into the Republican party.
Calling for livable wages, healthcare, and no war foreign wars (Is there any other kind of war besides a foreign war?) is not the same as accomplishing them. Obamacare is more federal overreach, and like most federal overreach, is a disaster. Far from lowering costs, it has raised them.
I'd like to know what constitutes a 'living wage' as much as I'd like to know what constitutes rich people paying their 'fair share'. Nobody ever says.
You can't eat money, and you can't live in it. You need to grow and process crops, and you need to process building materials, and then build with them. Just paying people more money doesn't get them more food and housing. Or healthcare. From my view, and I was a construction contractor, Trump and MAGA are not the problem in this regard. Progressives are. Ask yourself why there are few progressives in farming and construction.
Progressives have done all they can to bring in illegal aliens and keep them here. Have progressives ever contemplated what twenty million illegal aliens do to the supply/demand curve for food, housing and healthcare? No, they have not. MAGA has.
The dismantling of Jim Crow laws was also done by Democrats.
Civil wars are not foreign.
Here's a link to a living wage calculator from MIT: https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/18 I realize it was created by people at an American university and might be infected with the woke mind virus.
You worked in construction? I worked in health care. You know what everyone in health care hates? Insurance. Hated by patients, providers, and administrators alike. Billions of dollars to middlemen. The biggest problem with Obamacare is that the private insurers are still involved. Ask yourself why there are so few MAGAites in health care.
Finally—and I mean finally, no more quibbling with you—you keep bringing up "progressives" when the blame for much of what you're decrying actually lies with the centrist Democrats beholden to corporate interests. True progressives dislike them just as much as you do.
But, when it comes to decide what belief system is aceptable to you, which sources are you going to use to Learning about it. Somebody, many somebodies, have explain to you what it is all about.! Is that indoctrination or transmisión of tradition?
👏👏👏 This was a really good article, Liza! Columbia University converted you into a conservative because they have been captured leftist ideology and the left no longer values free speech or intellectual diversity. You saw in the unhinged behavior of your instructors and classmates and their intolerance towards opposing views, that the left had lost its mind and was not the place for you. You grew up immersed in progressivism but when you went to college you quickly saw that the left no longer believed in the ideals they once stood for. Just as the left in the Soviet Union alienated your grandmother with its totalitarian behavior, so too did the left in America alienate you with the same tendencies- Maoist-like censorship of speech, closed-mindedness, shutting down debate, language policing, cancel culture, and call out culture. As to you mentioned, the right has its own problems. But the moderate right is open to freedom of speech and freedom of thought unlike the left. It’s just a fact that there is more intellectual diversity on the right than on the left. I’m politically homeless and an independent moderate. I am socially liberal, fiscally conservative and hawkish on foreign policy. I avoid binaries and being put in boxes when it comes to politics. I’m about as middle of the road as you can get. I’ve always found more open-mindedness, willingness to accept a diversity of views and be friends across ideological lines on the center-right.
Liza is more of a libertarian than a true conservative, but with political polarization and tribalism being what they are, Liza has been forced to choose a side. She chooses the right because she agrees with them on more, they welcome her in with open arms and listen to her and they won’t cancel her for believing the things she does. I’m to the left of Liza on social issues. I’m all for a woman’s right to choose, gay marriage, affirmative action, gun control, immigration reform, environmentalism, labor unions, a social safety net, universal healthcare, and criminal justice reform. But nonetheless, I am fully accepted and welcome to be part of Pens & Poison’s audience. But I would be branded a bigot, white supremacist, alt-right, etc. if I tried to be part of a liberal or a leftist’s audience in a literature Substack. That’s the difference between folks on the right like Liza and her left-wing detractors here on Substack.
I went through a similar process simply by moving to Portland in 2010. Rather than some sort of liberal creative enclave, I encountered the most close minded people I had ever met in my life. The same signs in every yard promoting an unquestionable orthodoxy of opinion, upheld regardless of validity and not open to any discussion. A violent cancellation of anyone or anything remotely different from an utterly disconnected sense of passive aggressive “values”. A visceral hatred of any kind of authority, expressed through rage and vandalism that affected local communities and businesses run by ordinary people. An insistence on utterly stale and the worst side of leftist cultural patterns. I didn’t become a Republican, rather I would characterize myself as a person politically fatigued and exhausted by the constant barrage of lies from both sides. Pick which clowns are the least abhorrent, there are some good people on both sides.
On another note, I have immense respect for Paglia and have gained much by tracing her threads back through Erich Neumann and Jung. This path reveals an incredible and neglected intellectual current that easily demolishes the shallows of the modern Leftist academic orthodoxy. I think what we might need is a scholar who can take this current and create a new synthesis that does a kind of corrective justice to the social abominations that have arisen through misapplication of the likes of Foucault, Lacan, Derrida and Butler without deriding the accomplishments of either path. Done without rancor, it could be an immensely valuable and challenging project.
Here’s my deeper opinion: People are not thinking their own thoughts, yet they believe that they are. They are utterly the pawns of the social misapplication of actually deep and various intellectual currents that in most cases do have actual value when not blown out of proportion. These ideas can be understood and traced back to their roots and to their original contexts. It must be part of the duty of the responsible modern intellectual to undertake this task to bring an improvement to the set of forces which are brought to bear on the general public who are largely incapable or uninterested in the rigors of deeper thinking.
The most shocking part of this to me is the professor attempting to establish a point about Plath by appealing to the New York Times. All that time I’ve spent hunting down primary sources. Maybe it’s because I went to a lesser university; they’re so elite at Columbia.
My experiences at the University of Oregon, waaay back in the early '90s, had a similar effect on me. Although it marketed itself as acceptance, and diversity, politicay correct, , it was the same illiberalism that has come into full bloom over the last 10 years.
I well remember Columbia campus on November 9, 2016. As someone who'd been on campus for nearly six years at that point, I'd rooted for Trump in that election and wore a red shirt that day as subliminal messaging. I ran into my supervisor from the engineering school by the spot of the old sundial, and she had clearly been crying. All across campus, people were walking around shell-shocked as if another 9/11 had just occurred.
What’s funny (or would be, if it didn’t represent the destruction of this nation’s patrimony) is that the MAGA movement and current conservatives represent the triumph of the 9/11 attackers. They persuaded a huge number of frightened Americans that the answer to protecting liberal democracy is to destroy it. Bizarre.
Funny, we essentially did a role reversal. I voted for Trump all three times he ran. It wasn't until this term that I realized the conservative party I once identified with is gone, and honestly, maybe never really existed the way I thought it did in the first place. Trump has made cuts to so many significant public initiatives, I've actually lost count. People have been directly hit by misfortune following his administration's overtly bad calls. The democratic socialist ideology the left holds is nowhere near the Communist regime your family fled. It much more closely resembles the model used across much of the EU, which allows for free markets and free enterprise while also allowing for financial safety nets for the public. There is nothing wrong with this model. I would argue it supports the greater good for the largest number of people.
Also, lest we forget: the GOP is behind the banning of books in this country, villainizes/mocks higher education, and often does not use critical thinking to support their worldview. MAGA are sheeple. In that same breath, I fully acknowledge and agree with the fact that the nonsense you encountered at Columbia is a real issue. But that does not reflect all liberals -- and to your point, people who cry about elections instead of bucking up and working for change need a good kick in the pants. 100%.
Actually if you read history about Chinese cultural revolution and Cambodia’s Killing Fields and Stalin—> you actually see the marks of what is happening now in America in the very beginning of their horrid history. Many intellectuals who survived those atrocities whose wrote biographies mention that they thought it was all a phase and that nothing would come of it. America has completely morphed the way it thinks about a lot of things. As stated, grouping people by characteristics, gender, country of origin or land owners etc was how it all started in those countries too.
Also- the EU and UK are not great places to reference right now. They are in a tailspin bc of their censorship, poor immigration policy, lack of free speech, lying/ corruption… Good govt, whatever one thinks it should be, doesn’t allow young white girls to be raped by mobs of brown men and turn their backs bc it’s against the oppressor/ oppressed narrative. They don’t let a white man bleed to death bc they are so afraid to be racists that they believed the brown man who killed him. If that’s good governance- no thanks.
I’m not on either side… but I’m much more afraid of the very Left—> they have all the institutions and the educated. The right has nothing- especially once Trump is gone. The right is the enemy you know—> they don’t have any tricks up their sleeves.
The DSA is organized. Also- read the new DSA policy goals—> see below. Like she said- conservatives want to preserve the values/ traditions and we need that… you can’t everyone wanting to steamroll what was working.
Recently stated DSA policy goals:
Replace capitalism with democratic socialism — their stated long-term goal is a classless/socialist society.
* Draft a new U.S. Constitution and create what they call a “democratic socialist republic.”
* Abolish the U.S. Senate.
* Abolish the Electoral College.
* Replace the presidency with an executive chosen by and subordinate to Congress.
* Replace/restructure the Supreme Court so the judiciary is chosen by and subordinate to Congress.
* Replace the two-party system with proportional representation, ranked-choice voting and multiple parties.
* Public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries.
* Aggressive wealth taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations.
* 32-hour workweek with full pay and benefits + a living minimum wage.
* Universal healthcare at no individual cost, including abortion and gender-affirming care.
* Free public education from pre-K through college + cancel all student debt.
Wow, I had a similar experience but only in my Feminism class. The professor was Iranian, and otherwise quite amazing. But I found it odd that for every other minority she stressed their background (Latina, disabled, lesbian, Black etc) except for the many Jewish women who are essential readings of course. In my final paper I mentioned one of Freud’s theories not because it’s been proven scientifically true but to establish that even his now abandoned theories held the same kernel of truth about Patriarchal society as I was highlighting. She told me to present it to others but remove all mention of Freud because it “wasn’t fashionable anymore.”
I just wanted to say that I joined your sub stack because that article you wrote how Columbia University made me a conservative was impeccably written. Thank you
If you’d asked me 6-10 years ago if I’d be against the Left now, I’d laugh. I’m Black and they’re “the only ones who care about my rights,” right?
The day I met a far-Left Jew who told me she hoped everyone in Israel was killed, even the Arabs, to “better the world once and for all” and then told me I (whose family survived British colonialism just last century) shouldn’t have bought a Rudyard Kipling book “because he’s a colonialist you know.” 😐
That summed up the problems with the Left. The good work is looking at the past yourself, and it’s healing to form your own opinions even if they are not “popular” (especially with extremists). Whether the extremists are telling me I can’t learn White history or I can’t “dilute my bloodline” it’s simply the same rhetoric as Brits had: ‘I can tell you what you can read and can’t read, who you can love and sleep with, because I’m your master.’
Welp. I stand with every survivor of Soviets, European and Muslim/Arab colonization, and the Nazis. None of us should accept this current Left as our “Masters.” We already fought and gained our freedom. They’ll have to cope with not being allowed to take it from us.
For the sake of Mirth--- I sent this to the Mgazine a while ago. No response
—Columbia Alumni Magazine. Please print this:
“To the office of records, Columbia College:
Dear sirs,
I graduated in the class of 62. I recently wrote your office asking for my transcript. You sent me a transcript for a certain Barry Soetero. I suspect the mixup was due to a similarity in names: Barry Spinello - Barry Soetero.
Wow! Soetero had an even worse record than mine.
What should I do with the transcript? Send me Soetero’s address and I will forward it to him. Or, I can fax it to our local paper and have them track this Soetero down.
I can agree that factions of the America's left have shut down free speech and demonized dissgreement, but I cannot see the modern-day Republican Party as a beacon of America's greatest values. Nobody likes cancel culture, and it has no place in a liberal arts environment.
At the same time, the Republican Party and Trump administration routinely erode free speech while claiming to protect it. This kind of hypocrisy is routine in regimes that aim to consolidate political control. For instance, the State of Israel, under Netanyahu's Likud party, have barred foreign journalists from entering territory without IDF supervision. For a country supposedly fighting terrorism, it is highly unusual they don't want anyone to see their military in action. Terrorism is a human rights concern, and I would never support any such organization. It is for this exact reason that the War on Terror was one of the most well-documented wars in human history - people saw a war that tried to help people.
Israel knows its war is not one of these wars. I recently read The Art of War, and one of the first points Sun Tzu makes is that wars that are won are those followed through moral law. Israel, aware that their war is immoral, knows they may win in Gaza, but never in the hearts of humanity. Accordingly, they have barred the press. Even throughout the other conflicts Israel has been involved in, press have been allowed. Israeli case law even established a right to free press, a right that Netanyahu and Likud likewise erode.
The problem lies not with liberalism or conservativism, but with political actors that desire control. Some of the nicest and most intelligent people I've ever met have been conservative, liberal, and anything in between. But, I've never heard of a politician who doesn't want control.
Yes. For one, Republican state legislators nationwide have been trying for years to limit free speech in schools, particularly when it comes to discussions about Critical Race Theory and related topics that they disagree with. Texas Senate Bill 12, which was supported by the Texas GOP, bans student gender identity and sexual orientation-based clubs. More than twenty states have sued the Trump administration for unconstitutionally withholding congressionally-approved funds for after-school clubs similar in nature. Trump's FCC has used the news distortion policy, which protects the public against false news, to shut down protected speech.
I can go on and on. The point isn't whether or not the speech in question should be there or not, if students deserve these rights or not. In fact, this isn't a question at all, as seminal Supreme Court cases and the Constitution itself clearly outline these rights.
Simply put, if the Republican Party does not support speech, they will utilize their political influence, populist "common sense" appeal, and corporate allies to shut it down. I will concede that the Democrats may not be the paragon of free speech advocacy themselves, but since the Republican Party is in power, it is essential to recognize and call out their gilded "support" of free speech, and behind-the-scenes erosion of it.
Why should the tax payer pay for an after school club? Why are schools teaching a political ideology that is racist? What news channel has been shut down? On the other hand, social media was pressured by Democrats to censor speech, and so they did. Only leftists seem to shout down campus speakers, only leftists want to cancel those who won’t submit to the trans mob, and, most importantly, the left has become overtly antisemitic.
Much of the taxpayer funding allocated to the education system for after-school clubs are block grants, which are highly flexible and broadly applicable to different programs. Therefore, taxpayer funds don't go to fund "radical ideologies," but support students so that they can themselves begin clubs autonomously.
Clubs and extracurriculars are a cornerstone of the U.S. education system because through these different programs, students build skills outside of the classroom. Many other nations do not have programs like this, and because America does, our students are among the most well-rounded in the world.
Moreover, I never stated that any news channel has been shut down. I spoke of the FCC's news distortion policy, which was historically employed very sparingly, and is intended to protect the public against misinformation by prohibiting misleading, libelous, and false speech.
For instance, Trump's FCC pressured ABC News in the past to stop the airing of Jimmy Kimmel's show for days because Kimmel criticized Trump for trying to use Charlie Kirk's assassination for political leverage.
Free speech censorship by both parties is alarming, and I even conceded in my previous comment that the Democratic Party is no "paragon of free speech advocacy themselves." My only argument is that both parties, both aisles of the political spectrum are becoming increasingly hypocritical when it comes to advocating for free speech, because they seem to be for it only when the speech is favorable.
Leftists may shout down campus speakers, but if you watch Charlie Kirk's videos, his supporters did as well. As a nation, we need to be increasingly relaxed and open when it comes to listening to opinions that differ from our own.
Lastly, I reject the claim that the left has become overtly antisemitic. The left in the U.S. is overtly anti-Zionist, and there is no prejudice associated with that position. Zionism asserts that ethnic Jews deserve a nation in what was Mandatory Palestine. To disagree with that idea is a political position, not a position that is prejudicial against Jews.
To compare, Hindus have been persecuted by Mughal rulers and other Islamic kingdoms for centuries in the Indian subcontinent. Hindutva and other Hindu nationalistic ideologies assert that India should be a land for Hindus to reclaim their lands.
Many people, both within India and outside, disagree with this ideology. Their disagreement is not at all tantamount to any disdain for Hindus; they simply do not agree with this ideology. While Hindutva and Zionism are not exactly equivalent, there are strong similarities between the two.
Therefore, to say that the left is antisemitic is false. There are certainly elements of the far-left that are antisemitic, and there are equally elements of the far-right that are antisemitic. But, neither the right nor left are overtly antisemitic. They are just both Americans that think differently from one another, and that is all they are.
What a story. I think it would be interesting if Liza were to invite someone on her channel who was also at Barnard at the same time to discuss what went down. Who knows, it might turn into an exchange of different perspectives.
Unfortunately, the "conservative" Republican Party you think you belong to no longer exists, and good luck trying to reclaim it. And if you think the current regime is actually protecting free speech, you're really not paying attention.
Yet here you are, freely voicing your opinion on an open forum with no ramifications. If you chose to go protest, you are free to do so as long as you don’t become verbally or physically violent towards people, buildings and law enforcement officers (state and federal). Additionally, the colleges and universities are also free to “teach” their version of “education” without any causation. The Republican Party may not be what it used to be but the Democratic party has been completely flipped on its head and dangerously close to socialism and communism which results in a much more dangerous “regime”. You seem to be the one with your head in the sand and not paying attention.
Anyone can make any claim they want. I'd appreciate your making the case that the republican party is more restrictive than the democratic party, especially in light of this post.
And Liza did not state that she was a republican.
Well...perhaps I misinterpreted "acceptance letter to the Republican Party." But I don't think I did. And I did not write that the Republican Party was more restrictive than the Democratic Party, but that they don't seem to be very tolerant of free speech (or religion, for that matter).
It might be time to move beyond Woke Derangement Syndrome.
You read "acceptance letter to the Republican party" differently than I do, but I make no claim that my interpretation is more accurate than yours.
As for WDS, I see MAGA as a reaction to WDS. At least at the start, MAGA developed to reject century-old progressive bigotry against anyone who wasn't a progressive bigot. I've got Liza to back me up, as she goes as a far back as Thomas Dewey in examining the extent to which the left has inserted its philosophy into public education.
I don't care who believes what. I care who attempts to force others to go along. Liza again backs me up, concerning 'liberal' strongarm tactics to force conformity on college campuses.
If you would care to examine MAGA tactics along the same lines, feel free. I didn't come here to defend the republican party. But I do feel somewhat less threatened by that party than by the democratic party..
I appreciate your response.
I didn't come here to defend the Democratic Party, although I think Trump and his minions have made a mess of things. I believe our education system, ideally, should expose students to a wide range of ideas, and that any shutting down contrary opinions is harmful. MAGA's insistence that we never look at the ugly bits of our history is just as harmful as the sort of indoctrination Lisa describes.
I also think it's funny that the progressives—the ones calling for affordable health care for everyone, jobs that pay a living wage, an end to foreign wars, etc.—are the new boogymen. It's the centrist corporate Democrats, not the left, who are responsible for so much of the absurdity MAGA reacts to.
MAGA does not insist that we not look at the ugly parts of history. it insists on accuracy. Both my and my wife's ancestors fought for the North in the civil war. They fought to end slavery. My wife's great great grandfather was killed at Antietam. MAGA is not opposed to teaching that the North fought to end slavery. They are opposed to NOT teaching it. It is progressives that do anything they can to work around minor details such as that the South was headed up by democrats and the the KKK was democrat controlled. Likewise, the making and enforcement of Jim Crow laws were by democrats. MAGA is not opposed to teaching this, progressives are. And, no, Nixon had no southern strategy aimed at bringing the KKK into the Republican party.
Calling for livable wages, healthcare, and no war foreign wars (Is there any other kind of war besides a foreign war?) is not the same as accomplishing them. Obamacare is more federal overreach, and like most federal overreach, is a disaster. Far from lowering costs, it has raised them.
I'd like to know what constitutes a 'living wage' as much as I'd like to know what constitutes rich people paying their 'fair share'. Nobody ever says.
You can't eat money, and you can't live in it. You need to grow and process crops, and you need to process building materials, and then build with them. Just paying people more money doesn't get them more food and housing. Or healthcare. From my view, and I was a construction contractor, Trump and MAGA are not the problem in this regard. Progressives are. Ask yourself why there are few progressives in farming and construction.
Progressives have done all they can to bring in illegal aliens and keep them here. Have progressives ever contemplated what twenty million illegal aliens do to the supply/demand curve for food, housing and healthcare? No, they have not. MAGA has.
The dismantling of Jim Crow laws was also done by Democrats.
Civil wars are not foreign.
Here's a link to a living wage calculator from MIT: https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/18 I realize it was created by people at an American university and might be infected with the woke mind virus.
You worked in construction? I worked in health care. You know what everyone in health care hates? Insurance. Hated by patients, providers, and administrators alike. Billions of dollars to middlemen. The biggest problem with Obamacare is that the private insurers are still involved. Ask yourself why there are so few MAGAites in health care.
Finally—and I mean finally, no more quibbling with you—you keep bringing up "progressives" when the blame for much of what you're decrying actually lies with the centrist Democrats beholden to corporate interests. True progressives dislike them just as much as you do.
In my dream world, political parties do not control, or even attempt to control, our thoughts.
In my dream world, citizens flatly reject attempts to indoctrinate them and their children into any belief system.
The USA was founded on the Enlightenment philosophy of individual rights and responsibility. If only that was still the case...
But, when it comes to decide what belief system is aceptable to you, which sources are you going to use to Learning about it. Somebody, many somebodies, have explain to you what it is all about.! Is that indoctrination or transmisión of tradition?
I never trust one source, even when that one source is me.
And I don't trust multiple sources all saying the same thing.
I begin to think I comprehend an issue when I have heard/read intelligent assessments from mulitple points of view.
👏👏👏 This was a really good article, Liza! Columbia University converted you into a conservative because they have been captured leftist ideology and the left no longer values free speech or intellectual diversity. You saw in the unhinged behavior of your instructors and classmates and their intolerance towards opposing views, that the left had lost its mind and was not the place for you. You grew up immersed in progressivism but when you went to college you quickly saw that the left no longer believed in the ideals they once stood for. Just as the left in the Soviet Union alienated your grandmother with its totalitarian behavior, so too did the left in America alienate you with the same tendencies- Maoist-like censorship of speech, closed-mindedness, shutting down debate, language policing, cancel culture, and call out culture. As to you mentioned, the right has its own problems. But the moderate right is open to freedom of speech and freedom of thought unlike the left. It’s just a fact that there is more intellectual diversity on the right than on the left. I’m politically homeless and an independent moderate. I am socially liberal, fiscally conservative and hawkish on foreign policy. I avoid binaries and being put in boxes when it comes to politics. I’m about as middle of the road as you can get. I’ve always found more open-mindedness, willingness to accept a diversity of views and be friends across ideological lines on the center-right.
Liza is more of a libertarian than a true conservative, but with political polarization and tribalism being what they are, Liza has been forced to choose a side. She chooses the right because she agrees with them on more, they welcome her in with open arms and listen to her and they won’t cancel her for believing the things she does. I’m to the left of Liza on social issues. I’m all for a woman’s right to choose, gay marriage, affirmative action, gun control, immigration reform, environmentalism, labor unions, a social safety net, universal healthcare, and criminal justice reform. But nonetheless, I am fully accepted and welcome to be part of Pens & Poison’s audience. But I would be branded a bigot, white supremacist, alt-right, etc. if I tried to be part of a liberal or a leftist’s audience in a literature Substack. That’s the difference between folks on the right like Liza and her left-wing detractors here on Substack.
I earned my master’s degree at the New School for Social Research. I now say mass in Latin.
I went through a similar process simply by moving to Portland in 2010. Rather than some sort of liberal creative enclave, I encountered the most close minded people I had ever met in my life. The same signs in every yard promoting an unquestionable orthodoxy of opinion, upheld regardless of validity and not open to any discussion. A violent cancellation of anyone or anything remotely different from an utterly disconnected sense of passive aggressive “values”. A visceral hatred of any kind of authority, expressed through rage and vandalism that affected local communities and businesses run by ordinary people. An insistence on utterly stale and the worst side of leftist cultural patterns. I didn’t become a Republican, rather I would characterize myself as a person politically fatigued and exhausted by the constant barrage of lies from both sides. Pick which clowns are the least abhorrent, there are some good people on both sides.
On another note, I have immense respect for Paglia and have gained much by tracing her threads back through Erich Neumann and Jung. This path reveals an incredible and neglected intellectual current that easily demolishes the shallows of the modern Leftist academic orthodoxy. I think what we might need is a scholar who can take this current and create a new synthesis that does a kind of corrective justice to the social abominations that have arisen through misapplication of the likes of Foucault, Lacan, Derrida and Butler without deriding the accomplishments of either path. Done without rancor, it could be an immensely valuable and challenging project.
Here’s my deeper opinion: People are not thinking their own thoughts, yet they believe that they are. They are utterly the pawns of the social misapplication of actually deep and various intellectual currents that in most cases do have actual value when not blown out of proportion. These ideas can be understood and traced back to their roots and to their original contexts. It must be part of the duty of the responsible modern intellectual to undertake this task to bring an improvement to the set of forces which are brought to bear on the general public who are largely incapable or uninterested in the rigors of deeper thinking.
Excellent testimony. Noticed the leftists trying to stear your beliefs. Typical. When you discover truth it is profound.
The most shocking part of this to me is the professor attempting to establish a point about Plath by appealing to the New York Times. All that time I’ve spent hunting down primary sources. Maybe it’s because I went to a lesser university; they’re so elite at Columbia.
My experiences at the University of Oregon, waaay back in the early '90s, had a similar effect on me. Although it marketed itself as acceptance, and diversity, politicay correct, , it was the same illiberalism that has come into full bloom over the last 10 years.
I well remember Columbia campus on November 9, 2016. As someone who'd been on campus for nearly six years at that point, I'd rooted for Trump in that election and wore a red shirt that day as subliminal messaging. I ran into my supervisor from the engineering school by the spot of the old sundial, and she had clearly been crying. All across campus, people were walking around shell-shocked as if another 9/11 had just occurred.
And, in some ways, it has and more.
I can see how someone might feel that way.
What’s funny (or would be, if it didn’t represent the destruction of this nation’s patrimony) is that the MAGA movement and current conservatives represent the triumph of the 9/11 attackers. They persuaded a huge number of frightened Americans that the answer to protecting liberal democracy is to destroy it. Bizarre.
Funny, we essentially did a role reversal. I voted for Trump all three times he ran. It wasn't until this term that I realized the conservative party I once identified with is gone, and honestly, maybe never really existed the way I thought it did in the first place. Trump has made cuts to so many significant public initiatives, I've actually lost count. People have been directly hit by misfortune following his administration's overtly bad calls. The democratic socialist ideology the left holds is nowhere near the Communist regime your family fled. It much more closely resembles the model used across much of the EU, which allows for free markets and free enterprise while also allowing for financial safety nets for the public. There is nothing wrong with this model. I would argue it supports the greater good for the largest number of people.
Also, lest we forget: the GOP is behind the banning of books in this country, villainizes/mocks higher education, and often does not use critical thinking to support their worldview. MAGA are sheeple. In that same breath, I fully acknowledge and agree with the fact that the nonsense you encountered at Columbia is a real issue. But that does not reflect all liberals -- and to your point, people who cry about elections instead of bucking up and working for change need a good kick in the pants. 100%.
So when you say that the GOP is behind the banning of books in this country, could you give an example of a book that was actually banned?
Actually if you read history about Chinese cultural revolution and Cambodia’s Killing Fields and Stalin—> you actually see the marks of what is happening now in America in the very beginning of their horrid history. Many intellectuals who survived those atrocities whose wrote biographies mention that they thought it was all a phase and that nothing would come of it. America has completely morphed the way it thinks about a lot of things. As stated, grouping people by characteristics, gender, country of origin or land owners etc was how it all started in those countries too.
Also- the EU and UK are not great places to reference right now. They are in a tailspin bc of their censorship, poor immigration policy, lack of free speech, lying/ corruption… Good govt, whatever one thinks it should be, doesn’t allow young white girls to be raped by mobs of brown men and turn their backs bc it’s against the oppressor/ oppressed narrative. They don’t let a white man bleed to death bc they are so afraid to be racists that they believed the brown man who killed him. If that’s good governance- no thanks.
I’m not on either side… but I’m much more afraid of the very Left—> they have all the institutions and the educated. The right has nothing- especially once Trump is gone. The right is the enemy you know—> they don’t have any tricks up their sleeves.
The DSA is organized. Also- read the new DSA policy goals—> see below. Like she said- conservatives want to preserve the values/ traditions and we need that… you can’t everyone wanting to steamroll what was working.
Recently stated DSA policy goals:
Replace capitalism with democratic socialism — their stated long-term goal is a classless/socialist society.
* Draft a new U.S. Constitution and create what they call a “democratic socialist republic.”
* Abolish the U.S. Senate.
* Abolish the Electoral College.
* Replace the presidency with an executive chosen by and subordinate to Congress.
* Replace/restructure the Supreme Court so the judiciary is chosen by and subordinate to Congress.
* Replace the two-party system with proportional representation, ranked-choice voting and multiple parties.
* Public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries.
* Aggressive wealth taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations.
* 32-hour workweek with full pay and benefits + a living minimum wage.
* Universal healthcare at no individual cost, including abortion and gender-affirming care.
* Free public education from pre-K through college + cancel all student debt.
* Publicly owned housing + universal rent control.
* Federal jobs guarantee and major publicly owned green-energy/transit programs; phase out fossil fuels.
* Reparations and major targeted public investment in minority communities.
* Ultimately abolish police and prisons; redirect police funding, eliminate qualified immunity and weaken/disempower police unions.
* Abolish ICE, end immigration detention/deportations, grant amnesty to all immigrants regardless of legal status, and eliminate visa caps/quotas.
* Voting rights for all permanent U.S. residents, not just citizens, plus voting rights for incarcerated people.
* Massively reduce the U.S. military footprint — end foreign wars and close overseas bases.
* End U.S. military and economic aid to Israel and support a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
* End U.S. sanctions/embargoes, specifically including those targeting Cuba, Venezuela and Iran.
* Greatly strengthen unions,
This is how all the other countries who were communist and millions died—> started
Wow, I had a similar experience but only in my Feminism class. The professor was Iranian, and otherwise quite amazing. But I found it odd that for every other minority she stressed their background (Latina, disabled, lesbian, Black etc) except for the many Jewish women who are essential readings of course. In my final paper I mentioned one of Freud’s theories not because it’s been proven scientifically true but to establish that even his now abandoned theories held the same kernel of truth about Patriarchal society as I was highlighting. She told me to present it to others but remove all mention of Freud because it “wasn’t fashionable anymore.”
I just wanted to say that I joined your sub stack because that article you wrote how Columbia University made me a conservative was impeccably written. Thank you
If you’d asked me 6-10 years ago if I’d be against the Left now, I’d laugh. I’m Black and they’re “the only ones who care about my rights,” right?
The day I met a far-Left Jew who told me she hoped everyone in Israel was killed, even the Arabs, to “better the world once and for all” and then told me I (whose family survived British colonialism just last century) shouldn’t have bought a Rudyard Kipling book “because he’s a colonialist you know.” 😐
That summed up the problems with the Left. The good work is looking at the past yourself, and it’s healing to form your own opinions even if they are not “popular” (especially with extremists). Whether the extremists are telling me I can’t learn White history or I can’t “dilute my bloodline” it’s simply the same rhetoric as Brits had: ‘I can tell you what you can read and can’t read, who you can love and sleep with, because I’m your master.’
Welp. I stand with every survivor of Soviets, European and Muslim/Arab colonization, and the Nazis. None of us should accept this current Left as our “Masters.” We already fought and gained our freedom. They’ll have to cope with not being allowed to take it from us.
For the sake of Mirth--- I sent this to the Mgazine a while ago. No response
—Columbia Alumni Magazine. Please print this:
“To the office of records, Columbia College:
Dear sirs,
I graduated in the class of 62. I recently wrote your office asking for my transcript. You sent me a transcript for a certain Barry Soetero. I suspect the mixup was due to a similarity in names: Barry Spinello - Barry Soetero.
Wow! Soetero had an even worse record than mine.
What should I do with the transcript? Send me Soetero’s address and I will forward it to him. Or, I can fax it to our local paper and have them track this Soetero down.
Sincerely,
Barry Spinello, CC 62
I can agree that factions of the America's left have shut down free speech and demonized dissgreement, but I cannot see the modern-day Republican Party as a beacon of America's greatest values. Nobody likes cancel culture, and it has no place in a liberal arts environment.
At the same time, the Republican Party and Trump administration routinely erode free speech while claiming to protect it. This kind of hypocrisy is routine in regimes that aim to consolidate political control. For instance, the State of Israel, under Netanyahu's Likud party, have barred foreign journalists from entering territory without IDF supervision. For a country supposedly fighting terrorism, it is highly unusual they don't want anyone to see their military in action. Terrorism is a human rights concern, and I would never support any such organization. It is for this exact reason that the War on Terror was one of the most well-documented wars in human history - people saw a war that tried to help people.
Israel knows its war is not one of these wars. I recently read The Art of War, and one of the first points Sun Tzu makes is that wars that are won are those followed through moral law. Israel, aware that their war is immoral, knows they may win in Gaza, but never in the hearts of humanity. Accordingly, they have barred the press. Even throughout the other conflicts Israel has been involved in, press have been allowed. Israeli case law even established a right to free press, a right that Netanyahu and Likud likewise erode.
The problem lies not with liberalism or conservativism, but with political actors that desire control. Some of the nicest and most intelligent people I've ever met have been conservative, liberal, and anything in between. But, I've never heard of a politician who doesn't want control.
Can you provide some examples of the Republican Party routinely eroding free speech?
Yes. For one, Republican state legislators nationwide have been trying for years to limit free speech in schools, particularly when it comes to discussions about Critical Race Theory and related topics that they disagree with. Texas Senate Bill 12, which was supported by the Texas GOP, bans student gender identity and sexual orientation-based clubs. More than twenty states have sued the Trump administration for unconstitutionally withholding congressionally-approved funds for after-school clubs similar in nature. Trump's FCC has used the news distortion policy, which protects the public against false news, to shut down protected speech.
I can go on and on. The point isn't whether or not the speech in question should be there or not, if students deserve these rights or not. In fact, this isn't a question at all, as seminal Supreme Court cases and the Constitution itself clearly outline these rights.
Simply put, if the Republican Party does not support speech, they will utilize their political influence, populist "common sense" appeal, and corporate allies to shut it down. I will concede that the Democrats may not be the paragon of free speech advocacy themselves, but since the Republican Party is in power, it is essential to recognize and call out their gilded "support" of free speech, and behind-the-scenes erosion of it.
Why should the tax payer pay for an after school club? Why are schools teaching a political ideology that is racist? What news channel has been shut down? On the other hand, social media was pressured by Democrats to censor speech, and so they did. Only leftists seem to shout down campus speakers, only leftists want to cancel those who won’t submit to the trans mob, and, most importantly, the left has become overtly antisemitic.
Much of the taxpayer funding allocated to the education system for after-school clubs are block grants, which are highly flexible and broadly applicable to different programs. Therefore, taxpayer funds don't go to fund "radical ideologies," but support students so that they can themselves begin clubs autonomously.
Clubs and extracurriculars are a cornerstone of the U.S. education system because through these different programs, students build skills outside of the classroom. Many other nations do not have programs like this, and because America does, our students are among the most well-rounded in the world.
Moreover, I never stated that any news channel has been shut down. I spoke of the FCC's news distortion policy, which was historically employed very sparingly, and is intended to protect the public against misinformation by prohibiting misleading, libelous, and false speech.
For instance, Trump's FCC pressured ABC News in the past to stop the airing of Jimmy Kimmel's show for days because Kimmel criticized Trump for trying to use Charlie Kirk's assassination for political leverage.
Free speech censorship by both parties is alarming, and I even conceded in my previous comment that the Democratic Party is no "paragon of free speech advocacy themselves." My only argument is that both parties, both aisles of the political spectrum are becoming increasingly hypocritical when it comes to advocating for free speech, because they seem to be for it only when the speech is favorable.
Leftists may shout down campus speakers, but if you watch Charlie Kirk's videos, his supporters did as well. As a nation, we need to be increasingly relaxed and open when it comes to listening to opinions that differ from our own.
Lastly, I reject the claim that the left has become overtly antisemitic. The left in the U.S. is overtly anti-Zionist, and there is no prejudice associated with that position. Zionism asserts that ethnic Jews deserve a nation in what was Mandatory Palestine. To disagree with that idea is a political position, not a position that is prejudicial against Jews.
To compare, Hindus have been persecuted by Mughal rulers and other Islamic kingdoms for centuries in the Indian subcontinent. Hindutva and other Hindu nationalistic ideologies assert that India should be a land for Hindus to reclaim their lands.
Many people, both within India and outside, disagree with this ideology. Their disagreement is not at all tantamount to any disdain for Hindus; they simply do not agree with this ideology. While Hindutva and Zionism are not exactly equivalent, there are strong similarities between the two.
Therefore, to say that the left is antisemitic is false. There are certainly elements of the far-left that are antisemitic, and there are equally elements of the far-right that are antisemitic. But, neither the right nor left are overtly antisemitic. They are just both Americans that think differently from one another, and that is all they are.
What a story. I think it would be interesting if Liza were to invite someone on her channel who was also at Barnard at the same time to discuss what went down. Who knows, it might turn into an exchange of different perspectives.